‘The in-house magazine of the public affairs industry’
Daily Telegraph
Introduced by
EDITOR'S PICK
Good afternoon from William Cash, the Mace Editor-in-chief
Carry on, Clacton
Count Binface’s defeater goes back to work
I was in Clacton-on-Sea for polling day on Thursday. The result – Nigel Farage winning with 22,349 votes, a larger majority than in 2024, and Count Binface receiving 27% of the vote – was hardly a surprise. Farage won 63% of the vote but did not turn up for the count. Nobody is quite sure where he was at 6am this morning but at 6pm on Thursday I did see a tanned and confident-looking Farage, wearing a smart teal-striped blazer, enjoying a pint and holding court outside The Black Boy pub in Weeley, not far from Reform’s polling day HQ.
No sooner had Farage been declared the victor, the parliamentary standards watchdog announced that it would resume its investigation into accusations that the Reform leader failed to declare gifts and donations.
Seaside takeaway
What was a surprise to me, as a first-time visitor to Clacton, was how the reality was quite different from the depressing media image of Clacton as a deprived town of down-and-outs that has been left behind.
Much of the seaside town and its surrounding coastal hamlets, such as Frinton-on-Sea where I swam after a couple of hours talking to voters in the sweltering heat, are very pleasant. I spotted the odd Bentley and Aston Martin parked on streets close to Holland-on-Sea beach. A lot of the area has a faded art deco charm which comes from some wonderful village names like Walton-on-the-Naze, Kirby-le-Soken and St Osyth.
Many of the army of Reform members who descended on the coastal community to canvass voters and work as by-election volunteers came to Clacton in camper vans, caravans and tents to enjoy a bit of a seaside holiday in August.
Fishy business
This seedy image of Clacton – in particular neighbouring Jaywick – as a place to avoid was perpetuated in 2014 by Matthew Parris in an infamous Times column entitled, “Tories should turn their backs on Clacton”. He described the Essex town as “Britain on crutches” and “all-our-yesterdays Britain” that was “going nowhere”. He argued that the Conservative Party should be careless of the political opinions of such declining coastal areas rather than chasing their grievances.
Admittedly, I didn’t spend much time in Jaywick, which has been listed in government reports as the most deprived neighbourhood in England. But I did meet with some Reform volunteers who had stayed in a holiday park in Jaywick and they reported it was “not nearly as bad as we expected”.
But my point is that Jaywick is not really Clacton. The neighbourhood is a strange planning and architectural anomaly having been built in the 1930s as an affordable holiday destination of temporary summer chalets and unpaved plots for working-class Londoners. After World War II, many of these flimsy holiday shacks were converted into permanent, year-round homes, despite never being built for long-term habitation. So it’s hardly surprising that the area went into decline in the 1970s and ’80s when the UK domestic holiday trade collapsed due to cheap overseas travel, followed by the closure of nearby major holiday camps like Clacton’s Butlin’s.
Busting the myth
The reality is that the media has helped propagate a myth that Clacton is some kind of faded dump when it’s actually a slightly raffish and scruffy old-fashioned seaside town with a charming old pier and Ferris wheel. What’s more, much of the town and its trading community have been thriving commercially thanks to the by-election. As with Margate, gentrification is encroaching, notably in Frinton-on-Sea. It’s lazy to write Clacton off because of some run-down housing estates that are a planning hangover from the 1950s.
One lesson I did take away from Clacton was that, as with Makerfield in May, voters are suffering by-election burnout. Locals have felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of media and party canvassers who descended on the town in the last month, stuffing leaflets through letterboxes and repeatedly knocking on doors. Some residents were so fed up they swerved the ballot box altogether or cast a vote for a comedian – Binface received a substantial 9,455 votes – out of annoyance that their lives have been disrupted. As one Reform volunteer said: “We are marshalled around in teams and often there are a dozen people doing one street – it seems like overkill.”
Still, the by-election frenzy has been good news for local traders, as Mace’s Lucy Carrier-Pilkington and Ella Beadman report. They note that the by-election has brought a surge in tourism to the area which, combined with the record heatwave, means business is booming for many – a very different picture of a bustling seaside economy than the usual misery about clapped-out Clacton. Read their report here.
Prescott’s progress
From political editor of the Sunday Times to bringing down two BBC chiefs, Hanover’s managing director Michael Prescott has given The Mace a revealing interview that reflects on his distinguished career as a journalist and leading corporate strategist – as well as being a diehard Beatles fan.
Like many politicians, he read PPE at Oxford but says the Commons benches were never an ambition. “You need too thick a hide and the constitution of several ox.”
Instead, he became a lobby journalist on Fleet Street, first working for the Mirror’s political editor Alastair Campbell before serving as chief political correspondent and political editor of the Sunday Times from 1991 to 2001. One of his memorable scoops was the revelation that the late Ann Widdecombe had described Michael Howard, then Tory home secretary, as a man with “something of the night” about him.
After a colourful decade working for Rupert Murdoch under various editors, he was approached by Colin Byrne to join Weber Shandwick as vice-chairman. There he advised universities and FTSE firms such as Virgin Media, Balfour Beatty, British Nuclear Fuels and MasterCard. He also offered crisis management to various high-net-worth individuals and celebrities.
From BT to BBC
He served for eight years as corporate affairs director for BT and is now managing director of Hanover Communications. Until last year, he sat on the BBC committee overseeing editorial guidelines and standards. It was in this role as an independent adviser that – acting out of “despair at inaction” at the BBC leadership over how a speech President Trump came to be re-edited for Panorama – he raised concerns over impartiality. The leaked memo brought down BBC director-general Tim Davie and chief executive Deborah Turness.
Founded in 1998, Hanover is a leading UK public affairs agency advising on reputation management, public policy and crisis communication. At Hanover, Prescott is motivated by the positive impact advocacy can have when done in the right way, “helping interesting people working for organisations that do worthwhile things”. Regarding recent advocacy work showing his team at its best, he says: “All I can say is that Hanover continues to succeed in getting the government to step back from inadvertently doing harm, and in smoothing the way for government to help worthwhile organisations.”
Bad actors
About both the CIPR and PRCA calling for lobby industry reform, Prescott says he agreed with “whatever continued to keep our maligned industry honest
and proofed against bad actors”. He believes that people outside Westminster get “an awful lot” wrong about public affairs, as “the actual core of our industry is working with clients to focus on how they serve the national interest, and then explaining to government how and why it’s worth prioritising helping them to do that”.
He doesn’t believe public and government affairs is at risk from being negatively impacted by AI. “It speeds up the work we can do. Our industry is one of the better insulated – it’s rooted in how humans deal with humans.”
With AI able to generate slick presentations in seconds, does he think the traditional pitching process is outdated? “It can still be part of the fun of the industry,” he says, “so long as processes are well run and agencies aren’t dealing with time-wasters.”
Prescott has an unusually wide level of corporate advisory experience. As corporate affairs director at BT Group, he helped to launch and shape the brand image of BT Sport. And he was instrumental in brokering agreement with the government over the state-backed rollout of rural superfast broadband.
Looking sharp
In his long career, one piece of advice that has stayed with him is: “It is better to risk being the most overdressed person in the room than the scruffiest.” The leadership philosophy that he has formulated himself is simple: “Listen, weigh, act.”
It is a philosophy that seems to have served him well. Asked what keeps him up at night, Prescott calmy asserts: “Nowt!”
Read Michael’s Mace Q &A below – and find out why he thinks Mad Men is “the great Russian novel of American TV”.
The Strategist: Michael Prescott
Managing director, Hanover
"Better to be the most overdressed person in the room than the scruffiest" Read more >
The Advocate: Zara Harrington
Head of Public Affairs, Diageo. Read more >
Leader in Public Affairs: Konrad Shek
Public Policy Director, The Advertising Association
“I prefer strategy to performance, substance to theatre” Read more >
Industry Watch: Grace Pritchard
Downing Street Director of News and the Prime Minister’s Political Spokesperson. Read more >
The Mace Shadow Profile: Andrew Griffith MP
Shadow Business and Trade Secretary
“The Conservative Party started doing so many unconservative things that in 2019 I felt I had to get elected and change it. Let’s just say there’s more still to do!” Read more >
From the Archive
With all parties now ramping up their selection process for parliamentary candidates, Gus Carter looks at how the process really works. Read more >
Op-ed of the Week
Burnham is reorganising Whitehall, not reforming it, says Sir Bernard Jenkin MP. Read more >
Join the community shaping British politics - including public affairs teams at leading companies, political consultants, trade associations, think-tanks and polling.
Stay ahead of what’s really happening in UK public affairs, with expert analysis, breaking news, and insider insights from Westminster and Brussels.
Subscribe to The Mace at a special 30 % discount as a newsletter subscriber. Please email wendy.coumantaros@macemagazine.com.
Editor's Note: You’re receiving this because you’ve appeared in, or been shortlisted for, one of our Westminster Indices – described by the Telegraph as ‘an influential Who’s Who’ of Westminster’; or written for us, come to an event of ours, have connected on social media, or else are on our radar as a Leading Individual working in politics, public affairs and strategic comms today. We did write to everybody and thanks for all the positive feedback.
Credits: copy editor Piers Martin, digital editor Oliver Dean, associate publisher Wendy Coumantaros, captain of IT Daniel Colburn Smith, designer Cath Mackenzie, managing editor Emelia Wild and editorial assistant Ella Beadman.
